football

Illinois State senator Carol Sente is proposing that High School football teams limit tackling in practice. LINK:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-football-concussions-20130212,0,747478.story

Her bill proposes that high schools only allow tackling one practice during the week.

Mod edit: Yes, to use Hart20's words, this has been the day of controversy. I took away the party designation in the OP and posted the editorial parts as a comment in his name. Like anything else that straddles the political/sports line, tread lightly; do not use this as an opportunity to make a political point or make life harder on the other side of the political spectrum. JGB.

I, like some other folks out there, took a bit of umbrage with Urban’s open criticism of the other B1G coaches for failing (at least in his eyes) in their recruiting because the SEC has almost all its schools in the Top 25 and apparently that is the only thing that matters.  So I wondered what a closer examination of the results might say about how the B1G did comparatively to other conferences when considering more than simply the total score that a site gives based on number of recruits and their number of stars.  I wanted to look at where the recruits come from and how much of an advantage certain schools may have because the easiest hunting is always in your back yard. 

For a bit of background, I went to Scout and compiled the 2013 recruits (home state and Scout ranking) who committed to schools in the ACC, B1G, Big East, Big XII, Independents (BYU and ND), PAC12 and SEC.  As it turns out, this was a major pain in the butt.  I was planning to include the other 3 services in this my first foray into sports “analysis”, but based on the amount of time Scout took and considering I wanted to at least get something out in a week, that was not going to happen with completing time demands from a job and girlfriend.  Anyway, now that I have my excuses out of the way, down to it!

In addition to the location and ranking of recruits, I divided the US into conference footprints to get an idea of where the talent lies.

Chart?  Chart. (I always wanted to say that!)

	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	6	25	100	50
B1G	9	56	136	55
Big East	0	12	30	12
Big XII	6	51	128	54
Non US	0	0	3	2
PAC 12	6	57	169	86
SEC	15	117	267	103
Grand Total	42	318	833	362

As you can see, there is a hefty amount of talent in the SEC with over 1/3 of the 5*s coming from those states (BTW, I considered Texas as Big XII and Georgia/South Carolina as SEC although the SC designation could arguably be considered ACC country).  Here is the same chart with percentages which expresses the advantage more plainly. 

Footprint	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	14%	8%	12%	14%
B1G	21%	18%	16%	15%
Big East	0%	4%	4%	3%
Big XII	14%	16%	15%	15%
PAC 12	14%	18%	20%	24%
SEC	36%	37%	32%	28%

Well that just confirms the obvious.  Next I looked at how the respective conferences performed in the final tally with recruit signings.

Results	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	7%	12%	19%	23%
B1G	24%	18%	16%	16%
Big East	2%	2%	8%	15%
Big XII	7%	10%	15%	19%
PAC 12	17%	16%	18%	14%
SEC	38%	36%	22%	8%

As you can see the ACC…not so good and well Big East, but talk about stating the obvious.  This chart shows that the ACC only landed 7% of the 5*s in this class (according to Scout) whereas they had 14% of the 5*s in their conference footprint.  The other conferences pretty much performed close to where they should, save the Big XII 5*s .  But this still doesn’t tell the whole story since you can’t see if all the ACC’s 5* recruits came from the ACC footprint. 

Next I looked at how well conferences held on to home grown talent, let’s call it “retention”.  I’ll use the ACC as an example since this table is repeated for each major conference.

ACC Results	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	1	11	64	33
B1G	0	4	20	12
Big East	0	4	7	1
Big XII	0	0	4	5
Non US	0	0	0	0
PAC 12	0	2	4	7
SEC	2	18	60	24
Grand Total	3	39	159	82

As you can see, of the 6 5*s in the ACC footprint (see first chart), only 1 signed with an ACC school (17%).  To prevent chart overload (is there such a thing?) I consolidated all the conferences results into one chart which is below.

Retention	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	17%	44%	64%	66%
B1G	56%	61%	62%	42%
Big East	0%	17%	47%	75%
Big XII	50%	45%	56%	59%
PAC 12	83%	70%	72%	43%
SEC	67%	67%	46%	22%

I was a little surprised that the PAC12 did REALLY well in retaining their talent with the SEC doing the next best.  So looks like Urbs might be right that the recruiting didn’t go so well for the conference and the B1G needs to step up the effort.  But there is another side to this coin and it is something I called “poaching”. 

I defined poaching as a recruit who commits to a school outside of his hometown’s conference footprint (ex. Green from ACC land going to Michigan).  Again, I’ll use the ACC as an example. 

ACC schools inked 2 5*s from outside of their footprint from an available pool of 36 5*s which is 6%.  Again, the consolidated chart.

Poaching	5*	4*	3*	2*
ACC	6%	10%	13%	16%
B1G	15%	8%	7%	12%
Big East	2%	1%	6%	13%
Big XII	0%	3%	7%	12%
PAC 12	6%	4%	5%	5%
SEC	22%	19%	11%	3%

This time the SEC is top dog but the B1G did a pretty good job of poaching talent from other areas compared to the other conferences.  Interesting that the PAC12 is very strong at retention but not so good at poaching, but if you don’t need to hunt in your neighbor’s yard, why bother?  

I am left with a couple take aways from this.  First, the SEC has an unparalleled advantage when it comes to quantity and quality of recruits.  Second, the PAC12 is awesome at keeping talent who are in their footprint.  Those two factors combined create an uphill battle for the other conferences that are not flush with recruiting riches.  Although there is some truth to Urb’s statement, I disagree with the rather dire assessment of the B1G’s recruiting performance.  The retention of talent could certainly increase which should be a focus (Hoke’s emphasis), but the schools aren’t slouches when competing for guys who are not in the B1G footprint and in fact are one of the better conferences at doing so.

For even more detail, I examined the schools in the B1G because I wanted to see how significant the Big 2 - Little 10 (soon to be 12) is developing in the recruiting realm but I don’t think anyone will be surprised with those results.  However, this post is already too long and that could give me a chance to make follow up post if folks felt this was worthwhile.   

LINK!!

Today, the Big 10 issued a statement opposing the changes in recruiting rules scheduled to go into effect in July, reading in part:

We have serious concerns whether these proposals, as currently written, are in the best interest of high school student-athletes, their families and their coaches. We are also concerned about the adverse effect they would have on college coaches, administrators and university resources. We look forward to working with the NCAA toward improving the game, the recruiting process and the overall college football experience for all student-athletes.

Personally, I hope this provokes the NCAA to respond to increasing levels of criticism about the upcoming changes. The changes are going to do nothing but eliminate any down time for recruits and the coaches who recruit them.

Note: I know these rankings are a little simple, so if you want to know how I'd personally rank these classes, my favorite method is The Mathlete's. 

It was a relatively quiet Signing Day, but there was still some movement in the B1G rankings, especially at the bottom of the board. While the top five remained steady, Purdue leaped from 10th up to 5th and Indiana jumped to 9th, leaving a couple big names (and Minnesota) to bring up the rear. Changes since last rankings:

2-3-13: Purdue picks up Keith Byars II.
2-4-13: Ohio State picks up Dontre Wilson. Purdue picks up Dalyn Dawkins. Wisconsin picks up Tanner McEvoy. Minnesota picks up Daletavious McGhee.
2-5-13: Nebraska picks up Dwayne Johnson. Purdue picks up TyVel Jemison. Iowa picks up Reggie Spearman. Wisconsin picks up Donnell Vercher. Minnesota picks up Donovahn Jones.
2-6-13: Notre Dame picks up Eddie Vanderdoes. Ohio State picks up Vonn Bell and James Clark. Taivon Jacobs decommits from Ohio State (Maryland). Maryland picks up Taivon Jacobs and Jacquille Veii. Purdue picks up Da'Wan Hunte. Iowa picks up Jonathan Parker. Indiana picks up Maurice Swain, Laray Smith, and Chris Cormier. Nigel Tribune decommits from Indiana (Iowa State). Minnesota picks up De'Vondre Campbell.
2-7-13: Johnny Townsend decommits from Ohio State (Florida).

Chart? Chart:

Big Ten+ Recruiting Class Rankings
Rank	School	# Commits	Rivals Avg	Scout Avg	24/7 Avg	ESPN Avg	Avg Avg^	POINTS*
1	Michigan	27	3.63	3.81	3.63	3.59	3.67	99.00
2	Notre Dame	24	3.92	3.92	3.92	3.92	3.92	94.00
3	Ohio State	24	3.83	4.00	3.95	3.83	3.91	93.75
4	Nebraska	26	3.15	3.31	3.27	3.31	3.26	84.75
5	Illinois	26	2.73	2.77	2.73	2.96	2.80	72.75
6	Purdue	24	2.71	2.58	2.67	2.96	2.73	65.50
7	Rutgers	22	2.82	2.91	2.82	3.14	2.92	64.25
8	Maryland	22	2.86	2.73	2.86	3.09	2.89	63.50
9	Indiana	22	2.95	2.82	2.50	2.77	2.76	60.75
10	Iowa	21	2.81	2.71	2.90	2.81	2.81	59.00
11	Michigan State	18	3.11	3.06	3.11	3.22	3.13	56.25
12	Northwestern	19	2.89	3.00	2.84	3.00	2.93	55.75
13	Wisconsin	16	2.94	3.00	2.89	3.17	3.00	54.00
14	Penn State	17	3.00	3.00	3.29	3.18	3.12	53.00
15	Minnesota	19	2.74	2.42	2.79	2.89	2.71	51.50

^The average of the average rankings of the four recruiting services (the previous four columns). The figure is calculated based on the raw numbers and then rounded, so the numbers above may not average out exactly.

*The product of number of Commits and Average Average

NOTE: Unranked recruits are counted as two-star players.

On to the full data after the jump.

Per Delany's interview with the Chicago Tribune:

B1G's Delany to Tribune: Status quo of 8 conf games "not even on the table" now. It'll be either 9 or 10. Decision in spring.

A CBS write up is here with the following quote from Delany:

“We like to play each other, and those are not hollow words," said Delany. "We are getting larger and want to bind the conference together.”

http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/barrier_noentry.asp?ReturnTo=&sid=&... ($$$) No idea what Jabrill is reading but according to him, “I grew up a Michigan fan,” Peppers said. “I always liked the tradition from Mario Manningham to Mike Hart and all of those guys. The only thing that hurts Michigan at the moment is the coaching stability. I heard Coach Hoke has a lot of offers from the NFL on the table. I know I’m not going to go to a college because of a coach but if a head coach leaves they go into a whole new system and there is a new group of guys I would have to get used to and it just makes the process much more difficult.” It seems as these are stemming from Ohio bit Jabrill claims it is his own research.